I’m a week and change behind on my 1/week environment maps. So here’s three! Next Saturday I should be back on schedule.

These were shot along the Fremont Canal under the Aurora bridge, and the weather was insane. A giant cloud of mist came up and bloomed the whole sun, and I don’t know if the light probe truly captured the experience. Look how engulfed the water is in this pic, and this was my lowest exposure photo! The rest were the lil silver ball, plus pure white mist.

This pic also highlights the weird physics-bending nature of HDR. The tripod is about 6 inches behind the light probe, and yet the spot directly under the tripod is about 20% up from the bottom of the gazing ball. This should give you a sense of how the reflection bends light to show what’s behind it.

I experimented with using fewer photos to generate the HDR. What’s better, more info per pixel, or less blurry pixels? Especially the shots on the end of the pier, with the water moving up and down, I erred against blurriness.